Porto Cervo has been hit by some strong winds over the last couple of days hampering any chance of pre regatta training for the crews. Yesterday saw a steady 30 knots whistle through the islands and despite attempts to train, just leaving the dock was a mission. When you are sandwiched between two superyachts with a combined value of £40 million plus, you start to become a little more wary of your parking abilities! Especially when the yacht on your starboard side had Elton John sitting on the aft deck!
However, the mighty crew on Hetairos finally left the dock at about 3pm, with the intention of finding a sheltered spot to change out furling headsail. We did find this spot a mere 20 miles from the port. Being such a large boat. Any simple manouvre like this, despite the 25 people, takes a considerable amount of time. Once this operation was complete, we were thinking about hoisting some sail to get back to Porto Cervo, but a failure in the hydraulic system resulting in a fire in the engine bay soon put pay to this.
With breathing apparatus donned and fire hoses out, the boats crew set to to tackle the blaze. Thankfully, there was just a lot of smoke and not much in the way of flames, but none the less there was damage to the hydraulic system that had the potential to stall our regatta preparations. Out at anchor the crew set to to try and find a solution to the damage with their spares, and with the owner flying in today we knew there was a significant clean up needed. Thankfully the gods have been looking down on us and we have woken this morning to a pleasant 10 knots, and I believe the engineer has managed to fix the hydraulics.
Fingers crossed that we get out training this afternoon with the owner and all goes smoothly!